Heart of the Galaxy

Grace juggled his tablet and the brutally hot cup of noodles as he clamoured onto his couch. He managed not to spill anything as he laid out everything onto his coffee table. Doubly good thing considering he had half of the next weeks lesson plans scattered across the surface. Spilling hot dashi broth all over his AP Bio mystery project packs would honestly be a nightmare. 

But this was special circumstances. There really was no time to wait. The European Spaxe Agency had finally released the photos from Euclid. 

Grace had been quietly tracking the mission developments of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope that was set to launch later in the summer. Roman was a monumental advancement on Hubble. A view over a hundred times the size of its pedecessor, the ability to block light with meant actually being able to catalog exoplanets, planet-forming discs, galatic expansion... 

They would get a real, statistical census of the planetary systems of their galaxy. 

But the first step was the Euclid survey. And ESA finally, finally, was releasing the images. 

Grace took a sip out of the side of his instant noodles and immediately regretted it, flinching against the searing burn to his tongue and the sensitive flesh of his inner cheek. 

"Ow! Ow! Okay okay, one thing at a time, gosh!" He mumbled shoving a couple packets aside to place the cup down on a clear spot, tipping his chopsticks into the cup to save himself the trouble of possibly loosing them and having to hunt them down from under the couch later.

Patting his own cheek a bit as if to reassure himself before tugging the tablet over, one knee jumping anxiously as he waited for the ESA website to finish loading up. 

He nearly dropped the device when the first image finally loaded. 

Everything seemed to short circuit in his brain as he stared, soaking in every inch of the image. It was overwhelming and he felt the creep of tears in eyes then over his cheeks. A shakey hand pressed fingers into his lips as he tried to settle and control his breathing. 

The heart of the Milky Way. The center of their galaxy. 

There... there were so many stars...